


Conversations on Starling City

by Infie, TKodami



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode Related, Meta, Multi, mini-scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:28:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infie/pseuds/Infie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami/pseuds/TKodami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of standalone mini-scenes, drabbles, and other short reflections on the first season of Arrow through the lens of season three. Basically an excuse to make meta-obversations on the show in the comments! Warnings and tags updated periodically to reflect what's been written. Spoilers up to current episode (S3 E14).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who wants to add to / participate in the meta discussion is welcome.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life for Felicity at Queen Consolidated. Aka, the one where she learns about Oliver Queen's return.

Felicity catches the breaking news in an elevator of all places.

She had grabbed an apple and a bagel from the Queen Consolidated cafeteria and stuck one (the bagel) in her mouth to fumble for her ID as she approached the security check-in. She was hunched over, untwisting her lanyard from her scarf, when two personal executive assistants had hustled past her and pulled her along in their wake.

One pressed the top floor; the other floor 15.

Felicity took a healthy bite out of the bagel. Okay. So her day was already getting off to a flustered start. No big deal. She leaned in to hit Floor 6--IT Department--when she saw the jagged block letters on the tabloid clutched under one of the assistant’s arms.

“Did that say ‘rescued alive,’” Felicity half-said to herself. “Who in this town warrants the splashy 60 point font?” 

One of the assistants turned to her. He looked shocked for a moment, honestly shocked, before he adopted the stare of someone who has to call down to the tech department on a daily basis for printer assistance.

“So I’ve been at code academy all weekend. Which very important celebutant should I berate myself for not following?”

The assistants shared a look--oh how Felicity hated that look--and one grabbed up the paper from its armpit cradle and slid it into Felicity's hands. The newsprint crinkled as it hit the apple and the bagel.

OLIVER QUEEN RESCUED ALIVE -- FATHER ROBERT QUEEN CONFIRMED DEAD

"Oh. Oh my god."

The bagel left a little half-moon of spittle on the headline as her eyes sped over the rest of the article. Details compounded. Five years. Massive storm. Lost at sea. Search parties called off. Miraculous return. She felt a little sick as she sheepishly handed the paper back.

"If we could just--pretend this didn't happen, I'd like to pretend that I couldn't be fired for this." The assistants shared another look--the long-suffering camaraderie of working for the upper brass, she was sure. One of the assistants seemed to relent in the face of her growing panic, and nodded slightly.

Floor 15 pinged, and the assistant with the paper got off. In a daze, Felicity exited too.

"Thanks," she called after the receding back of harried assistant, who made a beeline for a large, glass-walled office. "And...this is not my floor!"

Felicity allowed herself to gaze at the posh corner offices, the soaring, open windows, the morning light falling through the skylights. Distantly, she wondered if any of these offices had been Robert Queen's (of course not: he would have been top floor, right?), and searched her memory if maybe--just maybe--she had seen him at an interoffice meeting? Or had sent for tech support when she had worked the helpdesk? But no. Before her time. Dead longer than she'd worked here. Son already missing by the time she'd landed on her feet in Starling.

 _Of course_ she wouldn't have recognized the headline.

She was new to a city she didn't quite know, but had chosen; in clothes that weren't quite Felicity Smoak, not yet; working a job that was just a step beneath her. But she was trying. She was surviving.

Felicity took another bite of her bagel, and hustled to the stairs.


	2. Honor Thy Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver reflects on his time in court, being legally resurrected from the dead.

Oliver had lied in court before (Yes judge, I feel badly about stealing that taxi. No judge, I did not know he was a cop when I urinated on him outside that pub); that much had made sense about his day. This time, Oliver had not felt shaky nervous as he lied for the record.

Only one who made it off the ship. (His father with a gun to his temple. Trigger pull).

Alone. On a deserted island. (Yao-Fei peering at him over a clay cup and a bundle of medicinal herbs.)

Five years. (His hood pulled back from his face to see the Hong Kong skyline through a destroyed wall of a ruined skyscraper).

Stranded. (Maseo and Tatsu, whispering quietly as he stood in their foyer)

Almost died. (Slade Wilson emerging from the darkness of a dripping cell.)

I had to live for my father. (The list, the booklet, names popping to life in the fire.)

He hadn't been lying when he said, "that was a little bit heavier than I was expecting it to be," to his mother and Walter on the steps of the courthouse.

His life was a miracle, his lawyer had said.

_Miracle._

Oliver weighed the word. Breathed it in. He felt the balance of the flat kitchen knife, how it would pull to the left, and threw it. It slammed into the hand of a woman with white hair who had come back from the dead. Chien Na Wei. Here. In Starling City. She dropped her knife, and barreled from the ruined apartment. 

Diggle was on his feet. “Are you hurt?! Are you hurt Mr. Queen?”

Laurel was in his arms. 

Oliver stared out the window, distant from the scene. Miracles: they weren't for people who deserved them. Thea was wrong. The dead _do_ want things. The dead return to finish what they started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In our current knowledge of Chien Na Wei's timeline, she's taken into custody by ARGUS or the military at the end of her operation in Starling City. I assume that at some later point, she is broken out/traded to China for other political prisoners/part of a Suicide Squad trial that didn't quite work/some other plausible sounding scenario to get her out of custody, after which she fakes her death and is assumed dead.
> 
> This is my headcanon for how she goes from a fairly prominent role in the Triad in Hong Kong two years prior to Oliver Queen's return to Starling City, to behind-the-scenes assassin at the start of S1.


	3. Pilot (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver had thought it would be easier, coming home. Pretending to still be Ollie. Keeping his distance.

He'd thought it would be easier. 

After everything he'd been through, after everything he'd seen and done and _been_ over the last five years, he'd thought that holding onto himself (his new self) would be easy. After all, Ollie had died on Lian Yu just as surely as Robert Queen had died on that lifeboat. What survived the island was someone else. The person that had been shaped by the island, by Hong Kong, by Russia... by pain and loss and rage, that person wasn't Ollie Queen anymore. 

When he'd decided to come back to Starling, there was a big part of him that didn't really think of it as _coming home_. Starling, and his plans to redeem his father's sins, were really just another mission. One with a lot more creature comforts and one where he would finally be calling his own shots, but a mission nonetheless. 

He remembered being Ollie, with a complicated combination of amusement and nostaglia, overlaid by a choking layer of self-disgust. He figured his memory was clear enough for him to simply ... wear Ollie like a once-comfortable pair of jeans. And it helped that Ollie was so far in the past that he should be able to keep himself separate. No one ever expected anything from Ollie other than the surface, so he could lurk and observe and wait. 

Yes. Ollie was the perfect mask. 

When he saw his mother he was pleased to see her, when he'd held her it had felt good, familiar, but definitely not a challenge to his control. He loved his mother, but it was safely at a distance. 

Except. 

_Thea._

When he saw her, she looked so grown up. No longer the coltish child she'd been when he left nor the precocious teen from his brief sojourn to Starling. When she catapulted into his arms, she felt precious. She felt like _home_ , and all his love for her filled him, threatening his composure and shaking him to his bones. He felt _everything_ , he felt like her brother. He felt like Ollie, coming alive. Fucking Ollie and his treacherous feelings, threatening everything. 

And Tommy. 

Laughing, irreverent Tommy. Best friend, brother in all but blood. Becoming Ollie for Tommy wasn't hiding, it was revealing some part of himself that had remained true, somehow, through everything. Being with Tommy made him feel like he'd come home in a way absolutely nothing else did. 

He hadn't considered that, after so long away, his family would be watching him so damned closely, examining his every expression and making his slips so much harder to cover. Hadn't thought that after so long being not Ollie, wearing him would mean making the effort to remember to _be him_. 

He stood at the top of the stairs leading down to his welcome home party, and started down them, checking his phone before taking a deep breath and dredging up Ollie. Seeing Tommy waiting for him made is easier, but he just knew Hunt was going to be an asshole and need a visit from The Man in the Hood. 

It was a good thing he'd had so much experience at being that man. As for transitioning between him and Ollie, well. 

Practice made perfect. He would just have to train harder.


	4. Honor Thy Father (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's never entirely comfortable for Tommy anymore, seeing Moira Queen.

It was so ... _fantastic_ , having Ollie home. 

Before Ollie died, before Robert died with him, Tommy hadn't realised it. 

Ollie was his whole goddamned world. His brother in all but blood, his best friend in ways Tommy had never appreciated until he was gone. Hell, Ollie's father was the only real father Tommy had ever known, and he was gone too. 

God, Tommy had missed him like he'd miss having an arm, or a leg. Like something absolutely necessary for his well-being had been removed. Not with any precision or surgical skill or anaesthesia either, instead it had been ripped out of him with greedy grasping claws, leaving nothing behind but a pathetically bleeding mass of torn emotions. He'd had no balance, no center, and he'd tumbled headfirst into a grief like he'd never known before.

It had taken so long to regain his sense of self, after, and the process hadn't been helped by the ocean of alcohol or the raft of pills or the kilos of cocaine that he'd buried himself in, looking for that anaesthetic that circumstance had denied him. That was a horrible, terribly dark time in his life and it had gone on much, much too long. He'd searched for comfort, and he'd done things in that quest that he was to this day still questioning the sanity of. 

The Oliver they got back from that godforsaken island wasn't the one they'd lost there, but it wasn't only Oliver that had secrets. Tommy didn't want him to find out about Laurel, at least not until he'd come up with a way of making the truth palatable. 

Preparing to leave for the courthouse, Tommy extended his arm to Moira with a charming smile. The look she gave him as she ignored it told him that she hadn't forgotten their joint despair or where it had led, and she wasn't prepared to deal with trying to find normalcy. His smile fell but he let her pass, a tacit agreement that some secrets couldn't even ever be _thought of_ again.

Finding out about Laurel would put a strain on his relationship with Ollie.

Finding out about _Moira_ would end it.

\- 30 - 


	5. Lone Gunmen (Hallmark Moment)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You mean there IS a card for that?

"What did you want to discuss about Laurel... ?"

"Wait! I have a card for you...."

  



	6. An Innocent Man (Assumptions)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has some thoughts on John Diggle and how he perceives Oliver even after learning he is the vigilante.

John Diggle. 

A true soldier. He will also make a true friend. 

He sees me as a dilettante. As someone who is damaged. As someone who is playing at being a crusader. Someone without training, without tempering, without quenching and whetting. A dull sword, a wet bowstring. 

Even with all the evidence in front of his eyes, he still refuses to see the _truth_. 

I've already fought in wars, I've already lost... so much. I've already cut away all those parts of myself he's concerned about; I'm already nothing left except purpose, and vengeance, and _the mission_. 

He can't ... He won't allow himself to see it. He needs to believe that I don't understand the costs of the choices I am making. He needs to believe that I'm at the beginning of this journey, that I can be diverted around those dangers to the soul. That I can be left whole. 

He wants to save me from a fate I've already experienced, that I am already living. Every. Day. 

He's kind. 

He's moral. 

He's perfect for my needs. 

So I will allow him those few illusions that remain. They will be broken soon enough.


End file.
